


story without words (folie à deux)

by andreaphobia



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Busking, M/M, Modern AU, Reincarnation, Reincarnation AU, Silly Boys, a shared delusion, a story without words, pretension - Freeform, sad boys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-24
Updated: 2014-02-24
Packaged: 2018-01-13 14:42:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1230268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andreaphobia/pseuds/andreaphobia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eren and Jean in a world where they could have been happy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	story without words (folie à deux)

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Français available: [Story Without Words (Folie à Deux)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2215782) by [Crowny](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crowny/pseuds/Crowny), [RizMayonnaise](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RizMayonnaise/pseuds/RizMayonnaise)



> A big thank you to [skyfireflies](http://archiveofourown.org/users/skyfireflies), who basically ghostwrote this, and to [orgiastique](http://archiveofourown.org/users/orgiastique) for putting up with me.
> 
> This story has been adapted into a short film by Delana Films, which you can watch [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kwjn8aN5KbM).

 

 

February was a month for feeling disjointed, all out of sorts. Despite his best efforts, the mountains of mail the office received remained Appalachian. The strings on his guitar had needed changing since Christmas, but that money—with a conscientiousness that felt as though it belonged to someone else—was saved to keep the lights on in his flat.

At night, the pipes groaned and banged in the walls if the neighbors happened to take a late shower, and the sound of it crept into his dreams.

That day was no different. At seven-thirty he rolled out of bed, washed up, and dressed. The forecast on the radio said an inch of rain, wet and windy, showers to continue through the weekend, and he was halfway through wrestling a shirt over his head when he remembered that it was his day off. The early morning light was a particular shade of pale, dusty grey. Clouds had descended over the lake and lay cradled there in the basin, as though they were loathe to fly away. The window panes held a suggestion of rain, but in Seattle, frequent, sprinkling showers were the norm; he left a few fingerprints on the sill, where a bird might have stood, pecking at imaginary crumbs, before taking off again.

It was too early for being human, but he finished pulling his shirt on anyway, and decided to go for a walk.

Outside his apartment, the air was cool and damp, and when it filled his lungs, infused him with a sense of weightlessness; a curious sort of yearning. Perhaps it was because he’d left his guitar at home. He bought an espresso from the coffee shop across the street, and when he rode the bus, he was only the third person on it.

With his forehead resting against the window, he could feel in his bones the deep rumble of the engine, and somewhere beneath that, the asphalt hot under the tires. Through the grimy glass he observed the city as it began to rouse itself from sleep. Beside an open dumpster, several pigeons squabbled with a seagull over a greasy paper bag. At a stoplight, he watched a man empty a bucket of murky water into the street, where it sloshed into a drain.

In a peculiar way, he felt that each of these experiences was separate from each other; unique, every sight and sound a thing to be cherished. They were moments in time that could not be rewound or relived, and that, Eren felt, was important—a realization that held buried within it some small, fundamental grain of truth.

No one got off at his stop, nor was anyone waiting to get on. He found that he had left his bus pass at home, paid three dollars bus fare, and alighted quite near where the grass became straggly and gave way to gravel.

The tide licked at the shore, then fled, leaving behind seawater dribbling through rivulets of sand in its wake. He made his way down to the water’s edge, where it was windier, bitterly cold, and the sea breeze flapped fussily at his hair, his jacket, like hands beating away dust.

He found a shard of driftwood tangled in a clump of seaweed. It was damp to the touch, and the bark felt warped beneath his fingertips. In wet sand he wrote:  _Hello is anybody out there_ , and when a bit of bark peeled off the end, the wood exposed beneath was stark white, like a bone.

Staring out at the water, with the sound of the ocean a dull roar in his ears, he thought, vaguely, of torrential affairs—the kind you got in movies, where you’d be standing together on the beach and you’d kiss them so desperately that you’d both fall over and get sand in your hair, but you wouldn’t even mind, because that’s what love did to you, it was.

He’d never had an experience like that personally. The last girlfriend he’d had—what was her name again? Almost a year and a half ago by now. She’d said that he lacked focus; that his absence of impulse control was tragically irredeemable. She had also called him a pillock who didn’t understand the value of education—an accusation that was not strictly true, since he had managed two full semesters of music before dropping out—but otherwise, she seemed to have the basic measure of his character.

Relationships which flared up briefly, then died away again once the other party found out what he was actually like, seemed a recurring theme in his life.

Behind him, a camera shutter clicked.

Eren, who did not wish to be photographed while in the middle of mentally cataloguing his personal failures, turned as ominously as possible. There was a young man standing behind him, camera in hand.

He felt that this called for the delicate approach.

Who the fuck are you and why are you taking pictures of me, asshole? he demanded.

The guy grinned. He at least had the decency to look bashful, although this was not strictly synonymous with contrition. Chill out, man, he said. You just looked really photogenic. Couldn’t help myself.

Well, erase it.

Can’t, he said and held the camera up. It’s film.

Okay, then burn it.

That’d be a waste of good film  _and_  a good picture, the guy said. He laughed, but Eren only shrugged. It was much harder to stare unhappily at the sea and wallow in self-pity when someone else was present. The wind picked up in fits and bursts, stirring little flurries of sand to life around their feet, and he was just thinking about giving up and going home when the guy said, My name’s Jean.

Eren, he replied automatically.

(Jean nodded, as though he had expected this to be the case.)

You come here often?

Not really. He pointed vaguely. I live over by the lake.

I’m staying in Belltown, said Jean.

Pretty expensive there.

Is it?

Eren could not think of anything else to say. Belatedly, he realized that he was still holding the stick of driftwood, and released it. Then he wiped his hand off on the seat of his jeans, and pretended not to notice when Jean chuckled.

When he glanced back over his shoulder, he saw their shoeprints winding away between patches of wiry brush and weeds, the paths they had tread already being swept away by the breeze.

Jean touched his arm. Listen, he said, with a smile. You wanna go get a coffee or something? Tell me about what’s got you in a funk.

—yeah, said Eren. Sure.

Someone on Eren’s income couldn’t afford Starbucks, but he maintained that the cafe near his flat was better, anyway. He got himself another espresso—Jean ordered a latte—and they sat at a table near the back. When Jean squeezed past him to get to his seat, he caught a whiff of something clean like soap.

Jean had high cheekbones and a small, pale mouth; his hair was short, ash-brown, styled in a kind of undercut. When he smiled, it showed his teeth. His eyes, when they met Eren’s, were piercing, but there was something playful about his expression, too.

When he reached for a sugar packet Eren caught a glimpse of his wrist beneath the sleeve of his coat, and felt a sudden strange desire to curl his fingers around it; to measure the width of it against his own hand.

According to Jean he was a student at Harvard studying law, the practice of, but for various personal reasons he was taking a gap year. Seattle’s a funny place to spend a gap year, Eren had said, Don’t people normally go someplace exotic, sort of thing? But Jean only laughed and said Enough about me, now tell me about you.

So Eren told him about sorting the mail for the Seattle Times ( _dreadful_  boring stuff; he wouldn’t recommend it), and on days when weather and schedule permitted, he busked in the street. That was somewhat better—at least, he enjoyed it, even if the compensation was infrequent and rather scarce. The guitar? I’d like to hear that, Jean had said, and Eren had flushed without quite knowing why.

It was sprinkling outside as usual, and if only it ever rained properly perhaps Eren might have had an umbrella for them to share, but he didn’t. At any rate, his flat was only across the street, and they weren’t headed the same way.

Afterwards, they exchanged numbers, Jean entering his name in Eren’s contacts as  _Jean the Great_  (something Eren would only discover later, when he went to make a call). And as they parted ways outside the cafe, Eren turned back and said I meant it about that photo. Make sure you burn it, and Jean answered You’ll be the first to know when I do.

Later that day Jean sent the first of what would be many texts: a grainy photograph of his camera, with a birthday candle stuck into the top of it. What? Eren sent back and Jean replied I’m burning it, this is what you wanted. It was stupid but it made him laugh—and really, that had to be worth something, didn’t it?

 

 

He wondered if a cartographer could have charted the course of their relationship; whether, if you extrapolated backwards in time from there, you could find some common point from which it all stemmed. Perhaps, there, you’d find the roots of their isolation, the sense of being completely and utterly separate from the people around them; the perpetual feeling of having mislaid something near and dear to their hearts.

Somehow, that shared feeling became the glue that held them together, and bit by bit, the good-morning texts, the midnight phone calls in which they affectionately called each other  _asshole_  or  _dipshit_ , the occasional face-to-face visit which inevitably led to the bedroom—as Jean became a part of his life, so all of these things became an integral part of his routine.

In Jean’s room, poorly hidden under a couple of textbooks, he found the very first photo Jean had taken of him (as he’d stood on the beach that morning railing silently at the injustice of being). It was, he had to admit, quite a nice photo, but more than that, he felt it ought to be treasured for being a memory from the day they had met: precious and fragile, a single moment frozen in time.

But many other moments followed, and sometimes he thought he’d have his work cut out for him, trying to hold on to them all. There was that evening that Jean came round to Eren’s street corner with coffee and a bagel—ostensibly to listen, but mostly to make a nuisance of himself. But it went both ways too, because (he reasoned, with flawless logic) if Jean was going to hang around, then he might as well help out at the same time. C’mon, he had begged, between chorus and verse, Just one song! And Jean had said Not on your fucking  _life_ , Jaeger, no  _way_.

But later, at home, after three drinks he had let himself be jollied into a duet of that one song by Sonny and Cher, and after six he had slow-danced with Eren through the living room to whatever happened to be on the radio at the time. (The music hadn’t matched at all, but Eren had barely noticed it.)

And then there was their tour of the city’s date spots—Pike Place was neat, the art museum was boring, and after Jean threw up on the ferry, they both agreed to no more boat rides. Later it had rained,  _really_  rained, and he’d had to buy an umbrella, but it turned out to be worth it for the kisses he could steal in the midst of the downpour, where no one could see them.

There was the mingled heat of their bodies, too, as they crowded together under a blanket, watching The Sixth Sense, with him holding Jean’s hand through all the jump scares because Jean had never seen it before and damn it it’s not  _funny_ , Jaeger, so stop fucking laughing.

Knowing Jean meant—experiencing a shade of  _happiness_ , which was a thing he’d thought only existed in movies, where the good guys always won in the end and the hero always got the girl. (He’d let Jean in on this thought once, with him as the hero and Jean as the girl, and that earned him a punch on the shoulder because  _If anyone’s the girl here it’s_ you _, Jaeger_ , but it was all the same, wasn’t it, thought Eren, when you got down to it; the important thing was that they had each other.)

On more than one occasion, Jean laughed and said something to the effect of My god, where have you  _been_  all my life?, and Eren would have to stop himself saying Funny, but I was just thinking the same thing.

And for a time it was good, better than good; he felt as though they had been made for each other, and this was the thought that got him out of bed in the mornings. He no longer drank alone in his flat at night; if he drank at all, it was with Jean’s head in his lap, Animal Planet on TV and the both of them laughing themselves stupid over a cat that could play Fruit Ninja on an iPad.

Late-night infomercials carved out a little room for conversation, and Jean was at his most candid at three in the morning. He spoke in broad terms of boarding school, absentee parents; a generally privileged life. Eren told about growing up in the country, how he’d hated it; the small-townness of his very small town, and how the fact that it was landlocked was what motivated him to move out here in the first place. Afterwards, he thought vaguely of his parents, who were still living in the house he’d grown up in a few states over. The porch with its paint peeling in some places, the battered tire swing in the yard.

It felt so long ago that he had last seen them, and yet he was sure he had just visited over the winter. He supposed that was one of the tricks that time played on you. Everyone everywhere was growing older; everything changed all the time. Nothing was static. It was the same feeling (he told Jean) that made him climb up on the roof in tenth grade, as high as he could, to see what he could see. That didn’t turn out to be much at all, but the act of being up there, in itself, had been strangely liberating.

As was his habit, Jean nodded like he understood. So, how’d you get down? he asked.

Fell off, said Eren. Broke an arm.

Jean burst out laughing. His eyes were bright, and for a second Eren felt very much that he would to photograph him; to freeze-frame time, to turn the way Jean looked just then into a tangible  _thing_  that he could keep in his pocket and carry around with him always. (All of a sudden, he thought he understand Jean’s photography habit; the impulse to nail down all those little moments before they slipped away like sand, like silt.)

Then, wiping tears of laughter from his eyes, Jean said— _Jesus_ , Eren. You’re one suicidal bastard, you know that?

The world stopped. Or perhaps it moved; at any rate, it was one of those moments where everything changed, like a magic eye picture you’d been staring at for hours when suddenly everything clicked into place.

Eren felt himself go still, too. A second later, he juddered back into motion.

—Hold on, he said, slowly. Say that again.

There was silence. The ticking of the clock was unnaturally loud, but was drowned out by the thunder of his pulse. The look on Jean’s face was a mixture of fear and alarm, but mostly fear, and when he spoke, it was with the utmost reluctance.

What?

That. What you just said, Eren told him eagerly. Say it again.

But Jean had that stubborn set to his jaw that Eren knew well; it meant he wasn’t going to budge. Didn’t say  _anything_ , Jaeger, dunno what you’re talking about. Look, you’re starting to hear shit, you need to get to bed, and so do I.

He staggered to his feet, leaving Eren alone in the living room, and afterwards when Eren went to lie down, Jean was already tucked in and snoring unconvincingly—but two could play at that game, Eren thought. So he rolled over, petulantly, to face the other way, and shut his eyes, willing himself to sleep.

That night, he saw a dream.

It was, he suspected, not the first time he had seen this particular dream, though it was the first time he had remembered it. In the dream they had wings, they flew through the air; but the wings did not sprout from their shoulders, they were tattooed upon their backs. They wore cloaks of forest green, and saluted with their hands over their hearts. And whenever they left the safety of the walls, death awaited them. Then the sepia tones fell away from his dream, the pretense of poetry dissipated, and all that was left was the stench of blood and shit and guts hanging, rancid, in the air. It was a war, and they, just boys, were right in the middle of it; a war that had to be fought, a war that could not be won. And when he woke in the morning, his pillow was damp with tears.

He found Jean in the kitchen, making breakfast. Standing there, with the sweet-floury smell of pancakes surrounding him; the hiss and pop of them sizzling in the pan and sunlight spilling in square slats upon the floor, he felt lost, all at sea. Hoarsely he asked You knew?, and Jean turned to him, and laughed without mirth in it.

—From the start, he said. Since before I found you. The dreams started and they wouldn’t go away. Every night I… he shuddered, stopped, and started again. When I met you, I thought I was even crazier. I mean, I was dreaming about you before we ever met. That’s fucking lunacy right there, you know?

Why the hell didn’t you say anything?

What could I have said? You’d have thought I was out of my mind. And I… Jean shrugged here, helpless or perhaps just resigned. I guess I wanted you… to be happy. For once.

And he would have gone on, but then Eren had crossed the kitchen in a few steps, crossed the lonely puddle of light on the floor, and flung arms around him. He was squeezing too tight, he knew, and probably he was making it hard to breathe; but it was hard to breathe anyway, with the knowledge of everything they’d had, everything they’d done, tightening like a vise around his heart.

You’re alive, he said to Jean, voice breaking. You’re  _here_ , you’re alive.

Jean could not speak; he could only nod. For now, they were here, they were alive. It had to be enough.

After that day, everything took on a different color, knowing what had been lost to get there. Everything meant something new. An angry cabbie leaning on his horn transformed into the sound of a bugle in his mind; all around him the horses were champing at their bits, the gates crashing open to welcome them into the wild world full of danger beyond. A car backfiring became the sound of a cannonball being launched through the air; the bustle of a busy street became the sounds of the town market at noon. If he closed his eyes he could almost hear the birds, the laundry lines flapping in the wind, the horses trundling in front of their carts. The air felt thinner every day, like glass, like ice, and maybe if he could punch his way through he’d come out on the other side and be whole once more, but nothing was ever that easy.

The strangest thing of all, though, was that life continued; that all the trifling little minutiae of everyday existence continued to build up and needed to be dealt with. He still went to work, sorted letters; still sang on street corners in the rain. Jean still came over, nights, weekends, some mornings if there was a special reason to or if he felt particularly like it or just because, and they still knew each other as Eren and Jean, Jean and Eren; the places had changed, but the names hadn’t. The familiar not-familiar story of them finding solace in each other, time and time again—after every expedition, every mission, and now here again, in this alien world, where the greatest danger Eren was likely to encounter was the risk of stubbing his toe in the mornings when he was half-asleep.

Was this divine punishment? he thought, as he lay semi-comatose in bed, one lazy Sunday afternoon. Jean was draped over him, asleep, maybe drooling a little, and everywhere they touched, Eren felt warmth bloom across his skin. The light from the window caught Jean’s hair at an angle; turned it that particular shade of burnished gold that dazzled the eyes. They were all tangled up, loose and languid, limbs and fingers, hipbones and thighs, and when he mouthed along Jean’s shoulder, he got a sleepy grunt in return. If this was his punishment—he thought, in a single moment of weakness—would that it never came to an end.

—But it  _would_. It  _had_  to. He felt the strangeness in the air more strongly with each passing day. Like a tumor or some other foreign body, the fundamental  _wrongness_  of their being seemed to have registered with the universe at large.

They did not belong. It was as simple as that.

We have to go back, he said to Jean, as they sat together outside a cafe one day, watching people go by.

He said this not as a request or a question; merely a statement of fact.

Fork halfway to his mouth, Jean paused. Then he set it down, thrusting himself back into his chair like he was digging his heels in for a fight.

 _You_  go back, Jean told him.  _I’m_  staying right here.

You don’t mean that.

Try me. Jean laughed, and it was full of bitterness. Look around you, Jaeger. No huge fucking monster is going to shove his hand through a window and try to bite your head off. We’re  _safe_  here.

 _They’re_  not, said Eren, grimly.

He didn’t explain—but then again, he didn’t have to. As always, Jean understood him perfectly.

He glared across the table at Eren, but Eren only gazed steadily back, with such conviction in his face that Jean was forced to look away once more.

A heavy silence settled between them. For some reason, Eren had expected a screaming argument, the same sort that they’d often had in their trainee days, but this was not the case. And yet the Jean that had wanted to escape into the interior, and the Jean that sat across the table from him now—they were one and the same.

Dispassionately, he wondered if this was the same face Jean had made on the day when they had chosen their military divisions. In some sense, it was happening all over again. A choice between safety, or leaping back into the mouth of the beast.

(He called them  _choices_ , but there was really only one.)

Eventually, Jean put his head in his hands. His shoulders, Eren saw, were shaking.

—Give me more time, he murmured, at long last. Let me be selfish… for just a little while longer.

Eren looked at him, and nodded, once. It was all he could do.

 

 

The last day, in some ways, felt very much like the first, except when he went for a walk, it wasn’t alone. They did a circuit of the waterfront park—which wasn’t much of a park at all, having no grass in it—then went for ice cream, and Jean surprised him with a scoop of mint chocolate chip before he’d even said what he wanted.

Actually it was too cold out for ice cream, but that didn’t stop them from having it anyway. The marketplace was full of stalls of people selling what Jean rather uncharitably referred to as  _junk_ ; watercolor paintings and beeswax lip balm, pottery and woolly hats (which Eren said that Jean would  _really_  look dashing in, if he’d only try one on). They held hands while walking and Jean didn’t even complain, although possibly that was because his jaws were sealed shut with saltwater taffy.

In the evening they had dinner together, and Jean told him, quite smugly, that having clam chowder on the pier was  _such_  a cliche, before going on to eat half of it and the bread bowl as well. And that was all right too—it really was, Eren thought, because you were lucky to have someone to go to dinner with at all, even if they swiped fries off your plate when they thought you weren’t looking, and then, mouth full and everything, acted like they hadn’t.

In a fit of gallantry, Eren picked up the tab, all the while thinking that he’d regret it until payday. There were benches by the pier, and it was a good place to sit and at least listen to the traffic go by, if you couldn’t spot the ferries in the distance.

He tipped his head onto Jean’s shoulder, breathing in sea breeze, the faint smell of exhaust, Jean’s shampoo, and felt—alive. The sun was rolling towards the horizon, the corners of the sky darkening in violets and blues and purples, a mirror for the sea.

It had been a good day, Eren thought. (But then again, every day they could spend together like this—every day he had with Jean—was a good day.)

And finally, finally, Jean spoke. He breathed out, something like a sigh, not so much weariness as regret and said All right, Jaeger. Let’s go.

At first, Eren did not follow. Go where?

Where do you  _think_ , dumbass? Let’s go back, said Jean, and then Eren understood. Back  _home_ , he meant. It was funny how the meaning of that word could change. Where was home? he thought. What was it? The place you were born? The place you had come from? The place you lived now?

Or could it be a person, a person you loved, if you swore you’d always find your way back to their side?

(He’d found his way back to Jean here, too.)

He’d asked in a murmur Are you sure? and he’d expected Jean to laugh, but Jean only sat back on the bench, his expression contemplative.

At long last, Jean had smiled, dryly, and said Yeah. Yeah, I’m sure. It… has to be now, you see, or I’ll never go. He stretched out a hand towards the sky; flexed his fingers as though he were trying to capture the setting sun within his palm, to stop time where it stood. Slow and don’t go; stay! he seemed to be saying. But at last he let go, and his hand fell back to his side.

Do you know the way? he asked.

—I’ve got an idea, said Eren.

The bus ride to the beach seemed to take no time at all. Instead of staring out the window like he usually did, he focused on Jean, committing every piece of him to memory. The freckle on the inside of his wrist, where he was most ticklish; the day-old stubble lining his jaw. The wry little tilt to the corner of his mouth, mark of the card-carrying cynic.

Everything, thought Eren, took on a different significance when he thought it might be the last time he ever saw it.

At some point Jean found his hand and held it. Laced between Eren’s, his fingers were warm, even as they shook.

Do you think, he asked, quietly, that we were put on this earth as a blessing, or a curse?

Neither, Eren replied. We just  _are_.

You think you’re so fucking deep, Jaeger. Then Jean laughed; he held Eren’s hand, and had his face buried in the other. It hurt a little, to see him like that, but they were going home, home,  _home_ , Eren thought, and there was nothing left to regret, no room left for hesitation.

The sun was dying at the end of the sea, and golden light glittered on the crest of every wave as it broke upon the shore. For a moment he imagined he saw a message written in the sand, but it was only a trick of the light. He took off his shoes and saw Jean doing the same, beside him.

At first the sand was powdery, and clung to the spaces between his toes; then it became damp where the surf had touched it, finely-packed under the soles of his feet. The water which lapped around his bare ankles was frigid. They waded in deeper, and over the crash of the surf he heard Jean call You’d better be there waiting for me on the other side, Jaeger. You goddamn son of a bitch. (His voice was trembling, but whether from the chill or something else, Eren did not know.)

Eren’s toes barely touched the ground. He tasted salt in his mouth, on his tongue, stinging his eyes. The waves came in higher—crashing, falling all around them like the breath of God. 

I will, said Eren. You know I will.

  


 

_TWO MEN DEAD IN DROWNING, SWEPT OUT TO SEA_

_The lives of two young men were lost on Saturday, after the ocean current pulled them under. Witnesses report that the two went out into the water together on Saturday evening, and were both pulled beneath the waves._

_Their bodies have not been found._

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos are greatly appreciated! :D


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